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Poster:
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Freebmovies |
Date:
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July 30, 2009 10:17:36am |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
I Personally uplaoded The War Devils... I got it off of a Mill Creek Package... And There is no registration of
The Motion Picture The War Devils @ copyright.gov
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Poster:
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 Video-Cellar |
Date:
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July 30, 2009 08:46:52pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
The film is a 1969 Italian/Spanish co-production. It was not released in the US until a significant time after it was release in its coutries of origin. It was originally published in the US with a valid copyright notice (C RAM FILMS INC MCMLXIX) so it was not "Public Domain" before GATT and remains protected for the full US copyright term (95 Years).
Many PD DVD distributers release fully copyright protected but unregistered works from 1964 onwards because they are not subject to statutory penalties if their copyright infringement occured before registration occurs.
Taking, for example, a typical Mill Creek 50 Pack like "Drive-In Movies" only about 10 of the movies are PD. The rest are made up of "free from statutory penalties" movies and independent movie and video catalogues that Mill Creek have licensed. There are not that many truely PD movies from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Mill Creek has also changed their business model and now work almost exclusively in copyright material. They have licensed a number of TV series (the entire Robin Hood series, Wanted Dead or Alive, Ironside) and Movies (Crown International Picture Catalogue, Bill Rebane's films, many more recent Indy Horror and Sci-fi films.)
Only Public Domain movies should be added to IA under the user terms.
This post was modified by Video-Cellar on 2009-07-31 03:46:52
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Poster:
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Freebmovies |
Date:
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July 31, 2009 06:38:52am |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
ok thanks for the info
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Poster:
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Ganbachi |
Date:
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July 29, 2009 08:30:55am |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
Erm... Just to add my two cents. I read in a number of places that the Japanese government decreed all films made before 1953 PD (well not exactly PD but copyright free) which would make the Kurosawa films you listed OK. Do you know something about this that I don't?
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Poster:
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Video-Cellar |
Date:
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July 29, 2009 08:37:09am |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
A 2007 Tokyo district court decision established that for films of Japanese origin made before the current copyright law came into force in 1970, a previous copyright law applies. The previous law protects the film for the life of the director plus 38 year term. This was reinforced by a high court ruling in 2008.
Kurasawa died in 1998. In Japan, his films made before 1970 will enter the public domain at the end of 2036 and the films made after 1970 will enter the Japanese public domain 70 years after publication. Because these films are copyright in their source country they are copyright in the US, under URAA. Technically, US copyright will extend to the full 95 (plus any future extension) years from publication even after the films have entered the Japanese public domain.
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Poster:
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Ganbachi |
Date:
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July 29, 2009 11:47:31am |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
OK. Shame. So where does the pre-1953 thing fit in? Lots of (usually) reputable sources are still touting that as law. Was it the case prior to this 2007 ruling or are we all confused racists in the west?
(I'm slightly miffed because I've spent some time & money tracking down rare Japanese 'Kaidan' movies and more time trying to get them translated and subbed and was going to upload some next month when they're finished)
Is there anything from Japan that can be uploaded apart from the Gamera and Starman films already here?
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Poster:
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Video-Cellar |
Date:
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July 29, 2009 08:12:22pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
Japanese copyright law is extremely difficult to get a grasp of. I'm only just getting my head around it. There is a massive double standard in the way the rule of Japanese copyright law is exercised. For a long time it was generally believed that the 1970 changes to the structure of film copyright in Japanese copyright law superseded all previous laws. There were elements of national eligibility that allowed the owners of TOHO films to successfully challenge this precept.
The Japanese court ruling I mentioned earlier only applies to films of Japanese origin. Other Japanese court rulings have defended the position that all films from other countries have a copyright term in line with the 1970 and 2004 laws (50 years [1970 law] or 70 years [2003 law]). So any American or British movie from before 1953 is effectively public domain in Japan (they have rule of the shorter term) but a Japanese film from before 1970 is only PD if the director died before 1971.
But the catch is, if the film was not PD or otherwise ineligible before GATT/URAA, it will not enter the US Public Domain until its full US term has expired. So effectively the only Japanese movies that are PD in the US are ones where the director died before the beginning of 1958 or were published in the US before the beginning of 1923 or are otherwise exempt from GATT/URAA restoration if there are any.
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Poster:
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guyzilla |
Date:
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July 28, 2009 05:49:45pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
Good eye, dude.
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Poster:
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quigs |
Date:
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July 28, 2009 05:14:53pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
I know it was wrong to have (it wasn't me who put them there)
but by golly, it would of been nice to see one of them.Good work guys (sigh).
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Poster:
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Diana Hamilton |
Date:
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July 28, 2009 05:23:02pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
Yeah, I was kinda skeptical when I ran across Now Voyager here one time. I should rent that sometime!
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Poster:
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quigs |
Date:
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July 28, 2009 06:09:46pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
Yeah you are right. It would been nice to see It Conguered the World before it was gone.
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Poster:
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quigs |
Date:
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July 28, 2009 05:18:14pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: COPYRIGHT FLAGS. These recent additions are copyright |
you are quick. I was watching It and before I knew it, It was gone.
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Poster:
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Fact_Checker |
Date:
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August 05, 2009 03:56:37am |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: Winnowed recent-moves / Babes in Toyland 1934 |
The list contains
http://www.archive.org/details/BabesInToyland1934There's strong reason to believe that this is still copyrighted.
What can mislead a person is that there were two renewals filed on this film. One of the renewal filings was invalid, but the other one seems genuine. The invalid one was filed by MGM, and it is undeniably invalid because MGM later disavowed it. Still, if the other renewal is valid (it was timely), then it doesn't matter that there was an invalid renewal also, because just one valid renewal is enough to qualify the film for its second term of copyright.
Documentation:
http://chart.copyrightdata.com/ch17.htmlThis page shows the essential data on the copyright renewals (repro'd from copyright catalogs) and quotes from the letter MGM filed admitting they weren't entitled to renew.
(Get to this section by scrolling down about 70% of the page to header "Conflicting Information Demonstrates that Additional Research Can Pay Off" -- just under big yellow text box)
The big question to answer to determine if "Babes in Toyland" was validly renewed is whether Auerbach Film Enterprises indeed was entitled to renew. Auerbach was pretty much a distributor of foreign films in America, so it can seem odd that it might actually have owned this film -- but the 1934 "Babes in Toyland" had an unusual chain of ownership. First, RKO bought the rights to make a movie from the operetta and announced in 1930 that it would soon make a production costing a million dollars. RKO abandoned the plans and sold the project to Hal Roach. Roach was forced to accept a provision RKO had accepted in its earlier contract: ownership of the movie would be turned over to the rights-holders of the operetta after a certain number of years. Roach distributed the movie through MGM while the Roach-MGM distribution deal was in place. A decade or more later, when Roach had new distribution deals for his past films, "Babes in Toyland" was now under new ownership and distributed separately by a company not having any of the other Roach titles. The new owners of the film likely found it troublesome to handle so little volume and would have been wise to sell their rights in full. In the early 1950s, the "Babes in Toyland" film had been used as collateral for a loan by Federal Films. Auerbach was likely not in a financial position to buy a film library, but a single title or small library would have fit their pocketbook.
One thing that we can probably safely eliminate is the possibility that when the film copyright came up for renewal in 1962, that a mere licensee (rather than an owner) filed renewal -- because the film wasn't in distribution in 1962. That year was in the midst of a long period when Disney was paying to suppress the 1934 version as competition to its 1960 remake. (William K. Everson in his 1967 book "The Films of Laurel & Hardy" says that the 1934 film had not been seen since the 1960 version.) Thus, figure that an owner would have filed renewal, because there wasn't a mere distributor at the time.
Does anyone have grounds to argue that the Auerbach renewal was not valid?
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Poster:
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Video-Cellar |
Date:
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August 05, 2009 06:06:49am |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: Winnowed recent-moves / Babes in Toyland 1934 |
David Pierce's "Forgotten faces: why some of our cinema heritage is part of the public domain" (Journal of Film History, Volume 19, pp. 125–143, 2007) contains some further information about the status of this film.
"The least typical Laurel and Hardy feature was Babes in Toyland (1934). The heirs to composer Victor Herbert would only license film rights to the 1903 operetta for a fixed term, so producer Hal Roach made his film under a ten year license to the story property. In 1945, after Roach’s rights had expired, the heirs made a new ten year agreement for $66,000 with producers Boris Morros and William Le Baron, whose Federal Films was planning to use Technicolor and feature George Pal’s Puppetoons characters for the toyshop sequences.18 Separately, they purchased the negative to the Laurel and Hardy version from Hal Roach Studios for a token $3,000. But when they were unable to get their film into production, Federal Films forfeited on a $100,000 bank loan in 1950 and the story rights (and 1934 negative) were seized by Pacific Finance Loans.19 The 1934 film was licensed for a 1950 reissue to recover some of the lost investment. Distributor Lippert Pictures, Inc. made some cuts to satisfy the MPAA, and left off the copyright notice when they renamed the movie from Babes in Toyland to the more commercial March of the Wooden Soldiers,
which increased the marquee value by shifting the emphasis away from babies and toys to war. Although the copyright for the original Babes was renewed, some adventurous public domain distributors distribute the film under the reissue title, claiming that their copy, at least, is in the public
domain because of the lack of notice." (p.129-130)
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Poster:
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Fact_Checker |
Date:
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August 05, 2009 05:26:49pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: Winnowed recent-moves / Babes in Toyland 1934 |
Through the 1980s, "March of the Wooden Soldiers" was a mainstay of public-domain VHS distributors, and it was pretty easy to find low-cost copies in major chain stores (Suncoast Motion Picture Company, MusicPlus, etc.). At some point, all of these copies on various labels disappeared from the stores. Multi-tape Laurel & Hardy sets that had contained it were replaced by sets that didn't. It seems likely that a legal challenge was made against these distributors. "Babes in Toyland" under that title had not been issued by these companies but "March of the Wooden Soldiers" had, so let's figure that the public domain companies were told that by copying "March of the Wooden Soldiers," they were infringing the underlying copyright on the 1934 "Babes in Toyland" (which of course they were).
If you figure that these companies had money invested in video masters, packaging, unsold inventory, and faced return shipping costs, you should figure that at least some of these companies would research whether "Babes in Toyland" did indeed have a valid renewal. I have no inside information on this; I'm just figuring that the lack of infringement of "March of the Wooden Soldiers" for about the last 20 years amounts to near-proof that the public domain companies with the greatest capital investments at stake became satisfied that the "Babes in Toyland" renewal was everything the film's owner said it was.
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Poster:
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Fact_Checker |
Date:
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August 05, 2009 04:24:34am |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: Winnowed recent-moves / Babes in Toyland 1934 |
In my post of about an hour ago on invalid notices and earlier versions of the U.S. statutes, I wrote that I probably was sounding like a broken record by bringing up the copyrightdata.com site again and again.
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=257504So what happens? I read that "Babes in Toyland" was on Internet Archive, remembered the documentation on copyrightdata, and posted on that too. Just so everyone knows, I do read other sites for copyright legal info. There just may be a massive coincidence going on that the topics discussed on this forum have answers there, thus leading to my link of
http://chart.copyrightdata.com/ch17.html too.
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Poster:
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archivemovie123 |
Date:
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July 29, 2009 01:56:16pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: Winnowed recent-moves in a still-big list |
Do you mean these are copyrighted and going to be removed or Public Domain and just a compilation list?
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Poster:
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Diana Hamilton |
Date:
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July 29, 2009 02:08:52pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: Winnowed recent-moves in a still-big list |
It's simply a list of all items that were recently corralled into Feature Films collection from Opensource Movies, PD or not. Many enthusiasts may not have noticed some of them were on the site until now.
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Poster:
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Scott Saunders |
Date:
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July 29, 2009 03:45:06pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: Winnowed recent-moves in a still-big list |
American Look is very much in the Public Domain. This is the Chevrolet promo film found in the Prelinger Archive I've re-edited the three separate reels and comprised them into a single film. That took a lot of effort on my part. Please make sure you are absolutely correct that these films are not PD before you remove them.
This post was modified by Scott Saunders on 2009-07-29 22:45:06
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Poster:
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Diana Hamilton |
Date:
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July 29, 2009 04:20:59pm |
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Forum:
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feature_films
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Subject:
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Re: Winnowed recent-moves in a still-big list |
Thanks for *so* much, Scott! :)
To clarify, I listed these films here as a convenient way for people to see all the suddenly "new to Feature Films" items, because the "This Just In" view will not do that properly for this set.
Looks like they're subject to the normal rights discussions that y'all have in this forum for any incoming FF items- it's just more than usual at once?
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